• Pace of downsizing slowed by nearly 10 percent in September, but the housing slump continued to take a heavy toll on payrolls with more than one-third of last month’s 71,739 announced job cuts coming from mortgage lenders, construction companies and real estate firms. … So far this year, about one job cut in six is directly related to the struggling housing market.

• Overall, September job cuts were 9.7 percent lower than the six-month high of 79,459 in August. They were 28.5 percent lower than September a year ago when employers announced 100,315 job cuts – one of only two times last year that monthly job cuts exceeded 100,000. Year to date, employers have announced 587,594 job cuts, 8.1 percent fewer than the 639,229 cuts announced by this point a year ago.

• Housing-related job cuts in the financial, construction and real estate sectors account for 97,509 or 16.6 percent of this year’s job cuts. In contrast, these three sectors represented less than 2.0 percent of the January-through-September job-cut total in 2006.

Here’s a look, by your blogger’s math, at how real estate skews the layoff picture for year-to-date (through September) …